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Category: Bad moments, sad moments

We had our first doggy funeral last week. It was for Tucker, whom we ushered into the Great Beyond a few days before Christmas. We had him cremated then after being euthanized and for almost six weeks kept the cardboard box filled with his ashes on Steve’s work bench in the garage. Last week we buried it up in Julian.

This was a novel experience for us. Over the years, Steve and I have had five pet dogs (in addition to the seven puppies we’ve raised for CCI; Tucker was both, a trainee turned permanent member of the family). All our pet dogs were big animals: a golden retriever and four labradors (one with a dash of Dalmatian). Their bodies seemed too unwieldy for us to consider digging holes in our back yard that would contain them securely over the years. We had nightmare visions of some successor canine digging up one of his or her predecessors. Instead we had our vet dispose of each beloved pet in turn. This didn’t bother us. They were dogs.

I don’t know if we’re getting old and mushy-headed or if it was just that Julian seemed such a perfect final stop for this particular dog. Since 2003, we’ve gathered in Julian every year with a close group of friends at the home of one the couples, and for 13 of those occasions Tucker accompanied us. Each has been a joyful interlude both for us humans, and for Tucker, who adored the woodsy deer-drenched smells of the surrounding hillsides. One year he ran off in the middle of the night into the forest, wild and free, with our then-current CCI puppy in tow. Somehow they found their way back to us. Wes and Jenny said they would welcome him to their property, for his final resting place, when the time came. So when we gathered in Julian this time, Steve picked out a spot, and Wes dug the hole.Steve positioned the box, while Adagio looked on (apprehensively?)Near the surface, Steve placed the little heart-shaped packet of wild flowers provided by the cremation company… …and finally, a simple marker.We didn’t pray or sing or anything like that, just admired the way the grave blended into its surroundings.

It would be nice if the wildflowers would bloom. Even if they don’t, though, and even when the sign disappears, we’ll never walk those woods again without thinking of our old buddy.

I’ve enjoyed Adagio ever since we got him (a little over a year ago), but in recent weeks my affection for him has been building. Maybe part of it is losing Tucker. But Adagio also has reached a stage where he’s almost pure pleasure to live with. He wakes up in the morning bursting with happiness; happy to go for a walk or (if he’s very lucky) run around the nearby field for a short spell. Then he settles down, mostly snoozing throughout the day but ready to venture out if an opportunity arises. He does almost nothing wrong. We have a few things to work on to prepare him for a life of service — getting him to better ignore other dogs on the street; extending the time when he reliably stays down on command. But we’ve been relishing the thought of having until November 1 to work on these things.

That’s the date we were told he would have to be turned in for advanced training. (CCI includes this information in the paperwork, when they deliver each baby dog to its puppy-raiser.) By November 1, Adagio will be less than two weeks from his second birthday — a little older than most of the other CCI pups we’ve raised. I was aware that sometimes this “turn-in” date gets pushed forward, but I shoved that possibility from my mind. Then last week I received an email from the puppy program administrators at our local CCI training center. Adagio’s new turn-in date would be August 9, it announced. “Thank you so much for your flexibility! Rest assured that in the past dogs have turned in at a younger age. If your turn in was moved sooner, this change of a few months is not significant in relation to their potential success!”

At a couple of gatherings with other puppy-raisers, I soon learned that Adagio was not the only puppy who’s been moved up. His sister, Apple, has too, along with two other dogs close to Adagio’s age. Most of their puppy-raisers seemed more blasé about the news than us; they’d been half-expecting it. But Steve and I felt crushed to have three months less of life with Adagio. We love him!

As if to remind me that he hasn’t yet reached absolute perfection, Steve found this on Adagio’s bed yesterday afternoon:

Those are the mangled fragments of a set of earphones. Happily, Adagio found them in Steve’s garbage can. They’d stopped working, and Steve had discarded them. So no real harm was done. Still, the difference between stealing earphones from the trash or stealing something like that from a desk is close enough to remind us we’re not done with the task of civilizing him. We just have three months less to do it.

The incident in question happened Saturday afternoon, after Steve and Adagio had returned from a long grocery-shopping expedition. Because Steve had items to stow in our street-facing “bike garage,” he parked in front of our house, instead of in the big garage out back. He brought in Adagio and most of the groceries. I petted Adagio and walked into another room to do something else. It was several long minutes later when Steve asked, “Where’s Adagio.” I called him using my piercing “Here!” command, to which he usually comes running.

But he didn’t come. We looked out in the yard. No Adagio. We checked my office, then the garages. Increasingly incredulous, we went through every room in the house, even the closets — twice. But he was clearly missing from ALL the premises.

Feeling panicky, I raced out the front door and across the street to scan the elementary school playground/field where Adagio enviously stares at the dogs running free there. But I could see no large black dog romping among them. Our neighbor across the street, noticing my distress, asked what was wrong and offered to drive around looking for our missing pooch.

I wanted to check the alley behind our house first, but found no sign of him there. Two more neighbors volunteered to start a search. By this point I was nearly incoherent with not just fear but also disbelief. Adagio has NEVER bolted out the front door (which we figured Steve must have inadvertently left open for a minute or two.) On a leash, he waits patiently until we give him a command to venture out. I ran out the door again and then went down onto the field. I crossed it and scanned the streets on the other side (our regular path to the coffee shop). Again: nothing. With tears in my eyes, I raced back to the house and prepared to jump in our car and start driving, when my cell phone rang.

It was Jodie next door. “Have you lost your black lab?” she asked. In what seemed like two seconds later, I was at her door. Adagio wagged his tail in greeting.

We learned that Jodie’s mother had walked outside and seen a big black labrador on her lawn. She went to get Jodie, a renowned dog lover, and Adagio trotted inside, at her heels. Jodie, as it turned out, was in the shower, but when she emerged she immediately posted a notice on our neighborhood website (Next Door Birdrock) about her unexpected visitor. Then she thought to call us. Vast relief swept over Steve and me. (Adagio looked like he would have been happy to hang out longer with the family’s gorgeous blonde miniature dachshunds.)

I am left to conclude that we must NEVER fail to close the front door ever again. You never know when someone will get it into their head to stroll out and go sniff the grass on the other side of the bushes. (If he does, however, it’s wonderful to have such helpful neighbors. In the end, besides Jodie’s on-line notice, no less than four neighbors had volunteered to help use scour the surrounding streets, looking for Adagio.)

“How can you stand to give up your dog? I could never do that!” Over the course of 14 years of raising puppies for CCI, that’s the question I’ve heard most. I respond in a number of ways: I talk about how you can only get into puppy-raising if you understand up front that it’s not your dog. “If you took care of a friend’s pet while they were on vacation, you’d be able to give it back, right?” I say. Raising potential service dogs is like that, just on a longer time scale. Sometimes I compare the turn-in process to childbirth — it’s agonizing when you’re in the throes of it but quickly over, freeing you to start all over with an incredibly cute baby creature. Or I talk about the huge payoff that comes when a dog succeeds and transforms the life of its recipient.

But there’s another reason, one that for me may be the most profound. The pain of giving away a puppy I’ve raised can’t compare to ending the life of a dog I’ve come to love over the course of many years.

This is what got Steve and me started raising CCI puppies. In 2004, we euthanized the best dog we ever had up to that point in our lives, a chocolate Labrador named Tootsie. Boisterous in her youth, Tootsie settled down to become a stalwart companion. She ran with us on the boardwalk. Around the house, she always followed us from room to room. She was a smiler, prone to great toothy grins in her middle years that told us more clearly than words how happy she was at the sight of us. Later, these mellowed into quick smiles she would flash whenever I glanced in her direction. In her 13th year, she aged a lot, grower deaf, losing her ability to see well. Her hips hurt, and when she could barely walk and cried because she couldn’t move through the house to be at the side of one of us, we called the vet and ended her life just short of her 14th birthday.

I felt awful about it; guilty thoughts assailed me. As soon as it was done, I felt like we had acted too soon. I’d heard about CCI, however, and shortly after Tootsie’s death we made the clear-eyed decision to raise puppies rather than ever again put a dear friend to death.

That’s how we wound up with Tucker, a doe-eyed, good-natured little fellow who stole my heart the moment he shambled into my sight early in 2005.Both Steve and I adored him. We thought he was the smartest, most attentive puppy we’d ever lived with. We wept when we turned him in for advanced training in May of 2006, certain he was destined for a stellar life in service and that we would rarely see him again. At the same time, we wanted with all our hearts for him to graduate. I still remember how the blood drained from my face two months later when I answered the call from our puppy-program director who broke the news he was being released: too much energy and too distractible to become a working dog.

I don’t remember that we agonized when we were asked if we wanted to adopt him. We loved him so much we couldn’t imagine not welcoming him to be our pet. Later, as subsequent puppies that we raised were also released, we grew more guarded and sensible. We had Tucker and wanted to raise more CCI puppies, and two big dogs was enough, so we found other good homes for others that didn’t make the cut.

We knew vaguely, of course, that Tucker would eventually grow old and we might once again face a terrible decision. But we had so many wonderful times together. We referred to him as the ultimate party animal; nothing gave him greater joy than going to social gatherings or meeting new people.

Young or old, he loved everyone.

He never ran away from our home, but once out in Borrego Springs he disappeared, and we found him curled up in the living room of a complete stranger’s house down the street from where we were staying. Another time, in Julian one winter night, Steve took our CCI pup out to pee, and Tucker took off through the woods in the dark — with the puppy racing after him. (Miraculously, they both made it back after a few moments in which Steve and I experienced the starkest terror.) Each time we brought home a brand-new canine baby from CCI to raise, Tucker greeted him or her with a wagging tail and a happy face. Some of them jumped on him or pulled him around by his jowls or otherwise harassed him, but he never took offense. We speculated they helped to keep him young.)

No fountain of youth works forever. Several years ago, Tucker started slowing down on walks, and we reluctantly cut back on them. We stopped taking him up the hill with us, and a year or so after that, we realized he wasn’t even up to making the mile-long stroll to our neighborhood coffee house. Instead we confined his outings to a slow lap around the block a few times a week. In 2014 he developed a cancer in his side, but surgery seemed to get rid of it. We fed him medicine to promote canine joint health, then added daily pain medication. Whereas once he could hear me crack an egg from the other side of the house and come running in the hope I would share part of it with him, he became so deaf in the last year, we had to shake him awake. I began to pray he wouldn’t respond; that he might become my first dog to die in his sleep.

One of his favorite places to snooze, in his younger days.

When Steve and I began to plan a long trip to India (for the fall of 2018), we gave a lot of thought to Tucker’s care. We found trusted friends to live in our house and take care of him. We discussed at length his prospects. Coming up on his 14th birthday, he might survive for another year or two, we knew. But what if things got grim while we were away? We told our friends if he stopped being able to walk outside to toilet or stopped eating, we didn’t want him to suffer. We left clear instructions at our vet’s office and departed, hoping things would work out.

We got periodic reports about how happy he was with his caretakers. (We’d been confident he would enjoy the exposure to new people far more than he would miss us, and this seemed to be the case.) By November, however, our friends started sending ominous reports. Tucker was struggling more to get to his feet and having increasing trouble with stairs. Several times he defecated in the house; once in his bed. We began to realize the end could be near, and it felt awful being halfway around the world from him.

As it turned out, he survived until our return in mid-December. He was happy to see us. He still enjoyed eating. But he had deteriorated in our absence. One week before Christmas, we realized he could barely struggle to his feet half the time. The other half, he failed and could only bark hoarsely, frustrated. Faced with taking him on a 1200-mile road trip to Reno, where we’d made plans many months before to spend Christmas with our son and his family, it seemed hard to imagine Tucker could survive the many trips in and out of our van. We consulted with our vet, and she agreed that given the circumstances, it might be best to put him to sleep.

I loathe that euphemism. With our (two) other pets at whose deaths I was present, it seemed like a baldfaced lie. But it felt closer to the truth for Tucker. He always liked going to the vet’s, and December 20 was no different. Steve and the vet and her assistant were all crying, while I outright sobbed, but Tucker didn’t seem bothered by any of our carryings-on. On the table, he gobbled down treat after treat, then slowly lowered his big head as the sedative took effect. When the vet injected the drug to slow his heart, he closed his eyes. His breathing grew more shallow, then it stopped.

Had Tucker in fact gone to sleep one night and not awakened, I would have felt a great sense of peace. He had a wonderful life with us and seemed to enjoy every minute. But he didn’t just die and wouldn’t have chosen to, if we could have asked him his wishes. We’ve tried to console ourselves with the thought that we saved him from reaching the pain of experiencing a life that was unlivable. But I still feel terrible about what we did.

The vet’s office arranged for the cremation of Tucker’s body, and for the first time ever, Steve and I opted to collect the ashes. We plan to bury him on our friends’ property in Julian, where he was so happy; where he once ran through the snowy woods in the night like a wild dog.

The “bio-urn” that we will bury next month

And we have once again taken the pledge. If Adagio or any puppies in our (near) future aren’t cut out for a life of service, we’ll find them the best homes we can, but not with us. We won’t take one back at least until our own sight and hearing have dimmed and our memories have grown foggy of just how hard it is to decide that your old friend’s life should come to an end.

Adagio looks like a black Labrador Retriever, but he’s actually one-sixteenth Golden Retriever. Because he is not a purebred, he had to have his testicles removed today.

That seems unfair, doesn’t it? Not to mention smacking of eugenics (except that so-called “science” was designed to improve humans, not dogs.) Females chosen for CCI’s breeding program can be a mix, so the girls are almost never spayed before they go in for their Advance Training (in the course of which, the decisions are made about who will be chosen to be a breeder). The situation is different for the males. I’m not sure why, but CCI has developed a policy dictating that only purebred labs or Goldens can sire CCI puppies. Next week Steve and I plan to attend a lecture about the breeding program, so maybe we’ll understand it all better after that.

What we have understood for months, however, is that we would have to get Adagio neutered when he reached his 8-month birthday. That milestone came last Thursday. We had called his vet the week before and were told the doctor didn’t recommend castration until dogs reach their one-year birthdays. So we called CCI to ask more directly about this timing. The puppy program assistant manager told us yes; the organization has come to believe the males’ personalities develop best if the boys lose their little reproductive organs at eight months, rather than later.

So it was that this morning at 7:30, Steve took Adagio in. Our pup walked into the office perky, wagging his tail. Steve retrieved him around 5 pm, and the sight of him as he stumbled across the patio upon their return broke my heart. His eyes were bloodshot and drooping. He was moving slowly, looking dazed. Worst of all, for a week or so, he will have to wear the dreaded cone to prevent him from licking the surgical site and pulling out his sutures.

We are hoping he will perk up tomorrow. He should be able to begin eating normally then. I will be very happy to have this behind us.

Although Adagio has his sleepy moments, he’s still playful and hungry.

I hate sick puppies. My dismay and anguish aren’t directed at the puppies. It’s not their fault, of course. But confronted with a baby animal that is in some obvious distress, I almost feel worse than when one of my human family is ailing. We have words to describe what’s wrong and guide us on the path back to wellness. A sick puppy can’t explain — or understand — what’s going on.

For the last six days, Adagio has been sick…ish. The trouble started last Tuesday morning, when we awoke to find evidence that he had vomited, sort of, in his kennel. We found no regurgitated solids, but rather what looked like lots of saliva. We tried to ignore this and fed him normally throughout the day, but the hour after dinner was nightmarish. He wasn’t vomiting or having diarrhea, but he must have peed 5 or 6 times within an hour — not the teaspoonish quantities that would hint at a urinary tract disease, but rather copious amounts every 10 minutes or so. Steve insisted this was payback from the puppy gods for my having blogged last Monday about how well the house-training was going.

Later that night Adagio woke us up crying a couple of times, and each time we took him out, he urgently evacuated more of the contents of his guts — not diarrhea, but something very close to it. In the morning, I called the vet to inquire about bringing in a stool sample. But the guts seemed to return to normal as the day wore on.

Adagio and his sister Apple, beating up on 5-month-old Kyla at the puppy social. He ran non-stop for a full hour.

Another puppy-raiser loaned us some of the Pro-Pectalin (the probiotics/pectin/kaolin pills that CCI is now recommending for pups with loose stools). Things continued to improve, and he played with ferocious abandon at the Saturday-morning puppy social. Then Saturday night he woke up at 1:30 a.m. crying in a kennel awash with urine and soft feces. While I cleaned up the kennel, Steve took him outside where he had real diarrhea. We put him back to bed, but he awoke again at 3. Then again at 4:30. And again at 5:30. At least I think those were the times; we were beyond groggy, stuck in a canine excremental nightmare.

It’s been up and down since then. One thing that has comforted us is how normally Adagio has been acting. He’s playful and energetic, and he’s eating with gusto. (Following standard instructions from CCI, we also cut back on his rations, but he just seems hungrier.) To limit the strain on both of us, I did something last night I’ve never done with any other puppy: slept in our first-floor guest room with Adagio in his kennel there, so Steve could get a decent night’s sleep up on the second floor. My night wasn’t too bad, though puppy squeaks did awaken me at 11:15. Outside, he had another small but unquestioned bout of diarrhea. Then he slept soundly until 5:45 am, when the sound of puppy vomiting noises awakened me. Nothing emerged from the regurgitory sound track, however, and he’s been eating and acting fine ever since.

I did manage to collect a (very normal-looking) stool sample early this morning, and I dropped it off at the vet’s at 7:30. They say we’ll have the results of the lab analysis tomorrow. This cost only $45, but Steve thinks the offering may be sufficient to placate the puppy gods, and that Adagio will now recover completely. I hope so.

If you have to suddenly acquire three additional large dogs, I’ll say this: it sure helps if they’re aspiring service workers. All the training — from their puppy raisers and the professional staff at the CCI southwestern regional center — makes them awfully easy to live with.

The three girls we were hosting (because of the threat to the center from our recent wildfires) could hardly have been better behaved. Friday night we even invited our nearby fellow puppy-raisers, Karla and Mark, and their neighbors to bring over the dogs they all were fostering (a total of four), plus Karla and Mark’s new charge, three-month-old Truckee. We thus had 7 adults humans at the dinner table, 7 adults dogs, and one very young puppy. It was a lot more civilized than one might imagine.

An awful lot of tail-wagging went on…

Then almost all of them (except Tucker) rested quietly in kennels.

Yesterday we got word that the fire danger had diminished, and the dogs would be able to return to Oceanside Sunday morning. We were delighted to hear that the center director would be transporting 16 of the 60-plus evacuees back to Oceanside in one of the center’s big vans. So this morning shortly before 10, we drove Stonie, Tiny, and Maitai the few blocks over to Pam’s house, where they were loaded into stacked-up kennels. We were sad to say goodbye.

Back at home, however, we got another dog-related call that thrilled us. The CCI staff informed us that Dr. Shields, the vet who conditionally accepted Beverly into her home earlier in the week, has definitely decided to adopt her. Since the two of them met, it sounds like Beverly has undergone some of the most sophisticated medical scrutiny possible. She’s being treated for a potential kidney and bladder infection in the hopes that this may slow the progression of her renal disease. She also has been enrolled in a UC Davis research project and is being followed by a veterinary nephrologist who plans to monitor her kidney function closely.

Best of all, it sounds like Georgette and her family have fallen in love with Beverly. That’s the best news ever. As good as dodging a wildfire.